He/She Who Makes the Rules Wins the Game….

In the last fortnight, 9 people applied to join my elite Blackwing Profit Coaching Club program.

I accepted 4 applications, and knocked 5 back.

These people had all provided their credit card details, wanting to give me money… and I said ‘NO’.

WHY?

Because life’s too short to spend one minute with someone you don’t enjoy.

My Coaching Club posse get heaps of my time and attention, so I’m very selective about who I let in and let get close.

When it’s your bat and ball, you get to make the rules…

What about you?

Have you ever had a toxic client?

I know from experience that it’s easier to stop them at the gate than to try to remove them later.

Toxic clients Poison your People, Ruin your Relationships, & Mess with your Mojo.

Are you going to be easy or hard?

EASY financial planners will talk to anyone.

They’ll take on anyone.

They’ll be all to anyone.

But what happens is that they get their time wasted, they’re under-valued & disrespected.

HARD financial planners… are exclusive, they attract the best calibre of client, can charge a premium, and avoid all the low-end headaches [Avoid Low-end headaches].

Everybody deserves financial advice but they don’t have to get it from you.

Here are 9 ways that I’m selective about who I work with – How many of these can you use?

1. Make a list of the ‘deal-killers’ (the qualities that you don’t want to deal with again in a client). As soon as you spot one in a prospect… RUN.

2. List the top 10 qualities of an ideal client, and only work with people who possess them.

3. Score each lead A-B-C-D like Paddi Lund used to:
A = Awesome.
B = Basic.
C = Can’t deal with them.
D = Dog. Put the dogs out of your misery, and only work with A’s.

4. Get clients by Ascension. Allow people into your entry-level advice offers or programs, and invite the people of quality to upgrade. You want a ladder for people to climb to get into your financial planning business.

5. Fire clients and say ‘NO’. I’ve only had to fire a handful of clients. In each case, I waited too long to do it. The rule of ‘slow to hire, quick to fire’ applies here. It’s easier to say no upfront.

6. Trust your gut. As soon as you sense that something might be a little off… say no. Too often we ignore our gut… but intuition is you “IN TUITION”. Take the tuition and save yourself a whole world of pain.

7. Invitation & Service Agreement Only. This serves 2 purposes:

a) Makes your prospects ‘sell themselves’ on why they should become your client and

b) Lets you interview them from a position of strength, not a place of neediness (as opposed to them interviewing you to see whether you’re going to be their financial planner….).

8. Only let your best people refer. Quality people are connected to quality people, and ‘dogs’ lie down together…

9. Make sure the commitment goes ‘both ways’…. Yes, you obviously have obligations and things that you commit to, but make sure that your client commits to some things as well so that it becomes a ‘two-way’ commitment. You need a ‘Joint Commitment Statement’.

Here’s the thing…

You don’t’ just want more clients.

You want more of the RIGHT clients.

Make yourself a criteria and position it so that it’s not easy to get in. You have to be ‘invited to join’.

That way, people will work harder and play better when they finally get in!

Hey, if you’d like to have a look at the Joint Commitment Statement template my Blackwing planners use to position each others commitments (including the Quality Referrals commitment…)…

I think there’s a link in here somewhere. I’m happy to share it with you if you like.

Otherwise, just type in the word ‘COMMITMENT’ and I’ll get my guys to shoot it out to you straight away.

Make the rules.

Stick to your guns.

Win the game and do really, really well in your business.

Have a great rest of the week.

Suns going down. I’m just about to take off home.

Have a great week and we’ll talk to you soon.

Bye for now.